Cleaning the drive is important if you’re planning to sell or give away this PC. That’s because formatting the hard drive makes it hard for someone malicious to restore your deleted files. But if you want to keep the PC, you can click Just remove my files to skip formatting the drive. Another more serious option for cleaning the hard drive is to use a third-party data-wiping tool like DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke). If you use a drive-clearing program, you’ll need to make sure you have a Windows 10 recovery drive or DVD so you can reinstall the operating system. See How to Clean a Hard Drive to learn more about this option.
If you’re using a laptop, make sure you plug it into a power source so the formatting is not interrupted.
If your PC came with Windows 8 instead of Windows 8. 1, formatting and resetting will revert you to Windows 8. [2] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source But don’t worry—you’ll be prompted to install a free upgrade to Windows 8. 1 soon after installing.
If you’re planning to keep the PC and aren’t worried about people accessing your deleted files, you can click Just remove my files. This won’t format the drive, though. A more serious option for cleaning the hard drive is to use a third-party data-wiping tool like DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke). DBAN and similar tools make it impossible for anyone to find fragments of your deleted files, so this might be useful if you plan to sell or give away your PC. Just make sure you have recovery media so you can reinstall Windows afterward. See How to Clean a Hard Drive to learn more about this option.
If you’re using a laptop, make sure you plug it into a power source so the formatting is not interrupted. Once the PC is formatted, it will reboot and prompt you to reinstall Windows. Follow the on-screen instructions if you’d like to do so.
You can release your fingers from the keys once you see the Apple logo or a startup screen.
Name: Enter a name to identify the hard drive. Format: Unless you have a specific reason not to do so, leave the default format of your internal hard drive as APFS. [4] X Research source Scheme: Select Choose GUID Partition Map.
If you have additional hard drives, you can format them now using Disk Utility.
If you want to reinstall macOS on this drive, just boot back into Recovery Mode by pressing Control + R at startup, and then select Reinstall macOS (to start from scratch) or Restore From Time Machine Backup (if you backed up the OS to Time Machine).
